Microsoft Live Royalties

Well, if this is true, it seems like a terrible move on Microsoft’s part.  Kotaku reports that MS has decided to cut the royalties that it pays to indie developers in half, from 70% to 35%; the rationale for this move is unclear, but might be related to a push to use the XNA package for future development. 

This seems like a bad idea for two reasons, 1 practical and 1 theoretical.  From the latter standpoint, it’s unclear to me why Microsoft deserves to earn a 65% cut of revenues when it provides no actual content development - its role is purely distribution and QC (both of which are traditionally low-margin businesses, since they’re not responsible for actually creating anything).  And from a practical standpoint, XBox Live derives most of its advantages - absolute and relative to the PS3 - from having lots of exclusive content, not from its interface or style.  If the PlayStation network had great games and a lousy appearance, we’d still use it. 

 This move is clearly going to discourage many developers from continuing to stay with the Live network, and to the extent that it hurts creative content development, is dangerously close to ceding ground to Sony.  We all saw what happened when Sony’s hubris led it to disregard its consumers’ needs and create an expensive product without enough content.  I would caution Microsoft to be careful about doing the same.

This is still just an unconfirmed rumor, but Microsoft’s response is hardly encouraging.  Good job to Kotaku for investigating this.

Color Me Unskeptical

EGM’s gossip column is reporting that Microsoft recently started development on a first-party sequel that was initially going to come out for the 360, but is now slotted for its successor.  Joystiq and this 1up author seem to think this is silly - the 360 is still a very young console.  But this strikes me as eminently reasonable.

It’s not unheard of for a big franchise to make only one appearance on a given generation: look at Zelda, which had only one entry on the SNES, or Mario, who took two whole generations to come up with a true sequel to Mario 64.  Given the enormous time and effort that would no doubt go into, say, Halo 4, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that it might take a couple of years to really get off the ground.  Plus: the 360 has been quite successful so far this generation - if I were Microsoft, I’d definitely want to try and solidify that lead by having a must-buy launch title for the Xbox 720 or whatever it’ll be called.

Riddle Me This…

How exactly can SCEA state that they don’t disclose console unit sales until NPD releases them, while providing percentage increase figures over a previously disclosed figure?  Moreover, it seems quite odd to dispute a competitor’s claims while not providing evidence of that claim.

Does that mean Microsoft is correct?  By no means.  But it would’ve made sense to wait to prove it.

A Halo 3 Product that DIDN’T Sell as Well as Expected?

For those so inclined, you can purchase the Halo 3: Legendary Edition set for the same price as the standard edition ($60) today only, from Amazon.  While this is by far the best deal I’ve seen for the Legendary edition, it seems like these Legendary boxes have been widely available ever since their release.  Weren’t these supposed to be “limited” special edition? They’ve probably sold a reasonable number, but the fact that they’ve been available for so long and are now basically being liquidated by Amazon probably means Microsoft really overshot the demand for the product.

Maybe most people really aren’t willing to pay over double the price for extraneous crap that they don’t need.

The Price is Wrong

Everyone knew that Halo 3 would continue to be a cash-cow for MS, not just with good retail sales, but with downloadable content. We may have even had a faint idea, or at least a suspicion, that the content would probably be overpriced. And so it has come to pass.

Microsoft has announced that the Halo 3 “Heroic Map Pack”, which includes 3 maps, will be available on December 11th for $10. That seems to be just a bit on the pricey side for me, and even based on past Halo experience is a pretty big jump. The last map pack for Halo 2, which came with 2 maps, debuted April 17th for just $4, or $2 a map. If I’m not mistaken, the earlier map packs followed a similar pattern, with a retail disc that contained 9 maps (and a few other goodies) for $20. The increase to $3.33 per map represents a 67% increase in price per map, far greater than the 20% next-gen “tax” that we’re now paying on $60 games.

Of course, like the other ones, if you’re patient, you can get the maps for free in a few months as well, but it may cripple your ability to play the game in the meantime. If you play a lot of custom games with people that you don’t necessarily know personally, you can pretty much expect to need the maps, as people will definitely be playing them (unless there is a mass boycott, which, given the ridiculous sales and the comments I’m already seeing, I’m guessing not). If Bungie adds them into your favorite matchmaking modes, you’ll be prevented from joining those as well. Then of course, once you get your free maps, don’t expect that you’ll be able to play your favorite modes much again, since the next map pack will be coming around the same time and could similarly require you to have it for your favorite game modes. I really hope that Bungie just creates a few “new maps” lists, or figures out a way to have people with maps and no maps co-exist, as anything otherwise would sort of feel like extortion just to continue playing the game you’ve already been playing.

While I’d love to have cheaper map packs, I understand why Microsoft is doing this. Most of the comments I’ve seen on the blogs have ranged from “Definitely picking this up” to “Seems expensive, but I’ll probably be getting it.” I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do about it, although it seems unlikely that I’d pick it up on the first day. I’d most likely get it if I ended up in a situation where I was in a custom game I wanted to play in, but was getting booted because I didn’t have the right maps. Assuming they don’t totally screw people and require the maps for all of the matchmaking modes, I’ll probably just stay away from custom games I’m not controlling.

But it got me thinking, why doesn’t downloadable content like this drop in price every month or two, and not just go from $10 to free overnight? Consumers are quite aware (and theoretically comfortable) of the “early adopter” fee. Whether it’s cell phones, computers, consoles, or software, if you want to be the first to have it, you have to pony up the full asking price. But over time, consumers know that the price tends to fall so that new customers can pick up the product. Wouldn’t it make some amount of sense for MS to drop the price of the content, say, $2 each month until its free? That way, they could continue to attract new customers to download the pack throughout it’s non-free life. I bet they would get a LOT more people to buy it at, say, $6 in a couple months than would be willing to pay $10 at any point during its sales period. Why doesn’t anyone do this? Do these packs really have to go from $10 to free overnight? How many buyers are they really getting, say, the month before it goes free?

Professional Plagiarism

In any case: it’s not the point of the article, but does it seem strange to anyone else that 6 tracks are shared between Rock Band and Guitar Hero III?  Of all the songs in the past 5 decades, Neversoft and Harmonix picked 6 relatively obscure songs (ok, I’ll give you Sabotage) between them?  I’m not sure if I’d chalk it up to creative competition or what, but I’d have hoped for more differentiation - especially seeing as how the side-by-side makes it clear that these are basically the same game.  (Especially if you’re not in a position to have 4 friends also buying their own $200 game to play with you.)

Halo 3 vs. CoD 4

It appears that CoD 4 is on track to outsell even the vaunted Halo 3.  It’s already sold 3M units and is on 4 times as many systems.  Kotaku is derisive:

And chances are, critically acclaimed or not, COD4 isn’t worthy to clean the shoes of Halo 3 or the 4 million games it’s moved on the 360 alone.

But I’m not so sure this is off-base.

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Weekly Chatcast #3

In this week’s impromptu Chatcast we discuss Bungie and Microsoft’s now official split, why it happened, and the future of the Halo franchise.  Enjoy!

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And you thought I was crazy… (Updated)

Here it is: Official confirmation that playing Halo 3 early will get you banned. You can’t even play offline, as your play history will give you up as soon as you connect. Completely ridiculous but as I predicted.

Find Halo 3 in the wild and you may as well just let it go until 9/25.

*UPDATE* Apparently this story has already been nipped in the butt bud (thanks Megan). Microsoft has “clarified” that the ban only applies to Microsoft employees who play the game early. Whether this was the original policy or MS changed it quickly before the story could blow up is uncertain, but now that their stance is clear, feel free to play some Halo 3 early should the opportunity come up!

One more Halo 3 Thought

I just wanted to add that if I somehow stumbled across a copy of Halo 3 before its release date that, given the absolutely ridiculous punishments Bungie is doling out to make sure people don’t play it, I would probably just refrain from playing it until the 25th anyway. Admittedly, the guys that downloaded “Halo 3 Epsilon” basically stole someone’s account in order to play it, but I still don’t trust Bungie or Microsoft not to do the same for me if I obtained it through more “legitimate” means. Why not just disconnect from XBox Live and play the single player?   One word:  Achievements.

Even if I were to disconnect XBox Live until 9/25 and play the single player I’m not confident that Microsoft wouldn’t actually search out people who had achievements pre-9/25 and actually ban their accounts and consoles from XBox Live.  Perhaps I could change the 360’s clock and disconnect and blah blah blah… it’s a big hassle and even then I don’t know what’s actually being recorded into the “Achievement”.  It’s extremely ridiculous, but I suppose we don’t even necessarily have the right to play legitimately purchased games (from the consumer’s end anyway) on our legitimately purchased consoles any more without fear of losing access to their online service.

Sometimes I miss the good ol’ days of online-unaware consoles.